India: Slow Death by Taxes

India's top industrialists are normally a
tight-lipped group. Forced to steer their organizations through the red
tape regulations of a government-dominated economy, they rarely sound
off in public, disguise their occasional criticisms as quiet
suggestions. Now, angrily and in public, they are issuing a warning to
Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri's socialism-bent government. Cut taxes
or see India's industrial growth halt completely.

Taxes have risen to such confiscatory levels, charge the industrialists,
that Indian investors are afraid to put money into new ventures or into
the expansion of existing ones. Said India's No 1 industrialist, J.R.D.
Tata, at a New...